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Fish Pie

A baked dish of fish stuffed with veal or fowl, bread crumbs, and gravy, topped with mashed potato border.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Clean the fish and stuff them with minced veal or fowl mixed with bread crumbs and salt.

Assemble

  1. Place the stuffed fish on a flat dish and create a border with mashed potatoes.

  2. Spread butter over the fish and sprinkle with additional bread crumbs.

  3. Top with balls of forcemeat and pour thick brown gravy over everything.

Bake

  1. Bake in the oven until cooked through.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Haddock + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fish (in the method)
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks to a flaky texture.
Minced veal or fowl
Adds savory meat flavor and a tender, moist filling inside the fish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the filling and help bind it, adding body to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Thick brown gravy
Adds moisture and savory depth, keeping the fish from drying out in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry once overcooked, while undercooked fish is unsafe. Checking for an opaque, flaky center helps the fish reach doneness without drying out.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, veal, bread, butter):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, veal, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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